


surely shifted my way

by ACertainKindofMagic



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Wedding Planner, First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, Meet-Cute, Miscommunication, Misunderstandings, Wedding Planning, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:02:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24084790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ACertainKindofMagic/pseuds/ACertainKindofMagic
Summary: Eddie is not a walking cliche. He’s seen the godforsaken Jennifer Lopez movie and ended up hating it for its wild inaccuracies and all-around ridiculousness. So no, he doesn't have fucking feelings for the groom of the wedding he's planning.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 22
Kudos: 269





	surely shifted my way

**Author's Note:**

> title comes from "marry me" by train. im sure eddie appreciates the over-used wedding song.

Eddie Kaspbrak is an excellent wedding planner. 

He should be, since he’s been in the business for ten years now. 

Hilariously enough, Eddie isn’t even that big of a romantic nor is he even a big believer in the concept of marriage as a whole. Ever since his own divorce five years ago, he’s pretty disillusioned by the concept of marriage as a whole. But the motions of planning a wedding are simple enough to master, especially when it’s clear what basically everybody wants on their wedding day: flowers, cake, and for nothing to ever go wrong ever. 

You’ll get all three and that’s a Kaspbrak guarantee. 

Not to toot his own horn, but Eddie has impeccable taste and he never creates the same wedding twice. A wedding with Kaspbrak Events is, in a word, perfection. There’s never been a bad review or even a mediocre review. Every wedding is unique to the future newlyweds, making it near impossible to recreate anywhere else. It’s classy, tasteful, and gorgeous; no detail is unplanned. From the color schemes to the delicate fonts on the Save the Date cards, there isn’t anything that Eddie hasn’t planned for.

Eddie finds that he enjoys the chaos of planning a wedding. (Since his divorce, he finds that he likes chaos in general - some people don’t do well under pressure; Eddie glides through like he’s fucking Nancy fucking Kerrigan). It’s high-stress and demanding and the hours are completely odd, but being the ringleader of the wedding circus is satisfying to him in a way that no other job has ever been. He plans for anything and everything. His contingency plans have contingency plans. Eddie finds that this is vital to the perfect wedding experience: where neither of the newlyweds have to worry about a single thing.

He’d fallen into the career of wedding planner, after his best friend Bill’s wedding planner dropped out of planning his wedding ten years ago to have a baby or whatever. Fucking unprofessional. Distraught and ready to pull his hair out, Bill had begged Eddie to help him plan his wedding to his now-husband, then-fiancé Mike. Eddie had reluctantly complied and the rest, as they say, is history. 

Today, Eddie has an appointment with a bride. The notes of his Google Calendar indicate that her name is Beverly Marsh, of Marsh Designs. Initially, he’s expecting somebody who is pretentious, standoffish and incredibly picky, as she’s one of America’s most famous designers. But what he gets is a big warm smile and a firm handshake.

“It’s so nice to meet you,” Beverly says, as she takes a seat in the chair across from his desk. “You planned my friend Kay McCall’s wedding last year. It was so beautiful.”

McCall. Lesbian wedding. Happened in an old Victorian style manor. Color scheme had been pastel blue and pastel pink, at the insistence of one of the brides, even though Eddie thought it made everything look like a baby gender reveal party, but he’d made it work. The DJ had gotten stuck in traffic and wasn’t going to make it on time for the wedding, but Eddie had planned to have a back-up speaker set with bluetooth capabilities brought in. Seamless. Nobody had even noticed.

“Thank you, Miss Marsh,” Eddie says with a smile. “So what are we thinking so far?”

“Just call me Bev, everybody else does,” she says with the wave of her hand. “We’ve always wanted a summer wedding. I know, cliché, but it’s when we met.” A wistful smile spreads across her face, like she’s remembering the moment she met the man of her dreams. Many brides are like this when the planning begins: wide-eyed and dreamy. By the end of planning, the look is a little more… stressed, to say the least. “So next summer would be great.”

Eddie starts writing this down. It’s a little over six months away, which isn’t a lot of time to plan a wedding. But Eddie has planned bigger weddings in less time.

“Any idea on the number of guests?” he asks.

“About a hundred,” she says sheepishly, like the number of people is somehow obscene to her. “He’s got a big family and we both have a lot of friends.”

Eddie hums in acknowledgement, nodding as he continues taking notes. “Six months isn’t a lot of time, but I can definitely make it work. Will the groom be involved in the planning…?” 

“On and off. He’s in London right now, working on a project with his company.” 

Eddie nods again. Absentee grooms are par for the course; most don’t want to stand in the way of their bride’s big day and some simply don’t really care. He wonders vaguely which one this one will end up being.

“I already have some ideas, if you want to see,” Beverly says. From her bag, she pulls out a large thick scrapbook and drops it on the table.

Eddie grins at her and picks up the scrapbook. “Now you’re speaking my language.”

—

Eddie doesn’t meet the groom until a month later, when he meets with Beverly to pick out wedding invitations. He’s set up an array of different cream, off-white, and ivory cardstock samples on the table in the meeting room, along with font samples and mock-ups of pre-made invitations. 

He’s… very tall. That’s the first thing that Eddie notices. He practically dwarfs Beverly and even Eddie has to crane his neck a little bit to look at him. He’s nothing at all like what Eddie has envisioned for Beverly. He had expected someone as suave and put-together as Beverly. Instead, he’s met with a broad-chested, Bigfoot-looking, overgrown frat boy. His dark hair is curly and wild and his glasses magnify the size of his blue eyes. 

Eddie had been under the impression that the groom was going to be in London until the month before the wedding, but he’s happy that he’s here to support her now. While brides tend to run the show during the planning, he appreciates that some grooms are willing to help out and give input into their own wedding. After all, it’s not really  _ just  _ the bride’s day; it’s his day too. 

“Richie,” he introduces himself as, shaking Eddie’s hand. He’s got a big grin on his face, like he’s really just happy to be here and be included. 

Eddie’s eyebrows furrow in confusion, since he remembered the groom’s name being something like Brad or Barry or some other B name. 

“Nice to meet you, Richie,” Eddie says. “Glad you’re here. I’m sure Beverly appreciates the support.”

“Oh yeah, she’s been tearing her hair out for ages,” Richie says. He looks down at the table, examining the cardstock choices that Eddie has lined up. “These all look the same to me.”

“Well, they’re  _ not _ ,” Eddie says, feeling his hackles rise already. Okay. So he was  _ that _ kind of groom. Eddie frowns and picks up two of the cardstock samples. Eddie picks up an ivory, smooth-coated sample and a cream-colored matte sample. “These are clearly completely different.”

Richie raises his eyebrows and throws his hands into the air. “You’re just holding up two identical pieces of paper!”

“Okay, first of all, this is cardstock, alright, not just any pieces of paper from your local Staples store—”

Just as Eddie is about to start a tirade, Bev comes back into the room as she ends her phone. “—love you too, hon. Okay, bye.” She looks up and finally notices them, with Eddie holding up the two cardstock samples in Richie’s face and Richie looking at him with pure incredulity. She giggles and puts her hands on her hips. “Well, it’s good to know that you two are getting along great.”

—

Eddie usually lets his underlings take care of the smaller things, like proofreading invites and Save the Dates. He has bigger fish to fry and doesn’t want to waste his time doing some basic grammar edits when he has assistants for that sort of thing. He gives the ones that his assistant Anna hands him a precursory glance-over, as he reads over some emails from the venue owner.

He doesn’t take note of the names on the invitations and hands them back to her with an approving nod.

—

The Cardstock Incident (as Eddie has taken to calling it) is unfortunately not the last time that Eddie sees Richie. Not even close. He starts to show up at all sorts of meetings and consultations and appointments that Eddie has planned with Beverly. He’s annoying and opinionated every time he shows up, seeming to have contrary opinions to Eddie’s just to get a rise out of him. 

He prefers the marble cake to the tiramisu.

Richie put one of the tiny plates of cake under his nose and sniffed at it, like he’s testing an aged wine from the cellars of an Italian vineyard. He took the tiny slice in his over-sized fingers and shoved the entire slice into his mouth. He considered the slice like he did the smell and made a face. 

“Marble cake is just factually the better cake,” he said.

He likes the silver accents as opposed to the gold. 

He sneered when Eddie handed him the menu mock-up for the rehearsal dinner.

“The gold makes it look gaudy and like we’re old money, Daisy Buchanan style,” he said. “Is somebody gonna run another person over at this wedding?”

He enjoys begonias, not gardenias. 

“They’re just prettier,” he said.

It’s all enough to make Eddie want to tear his hair out. 

Beverly doesn’t seem the least bit fazed by him and his contrary opinions. In fact, it still ends up being Beverly’s choice that they all end up going anyway, even though Richie seems to take pleasure in making Eddie’s blood pressure increase every time they so much as have to pick out which placemats to use for the dinner at the reception. She laughs at his ridiculous jokes and antics, endlessly amused by him. She clearly loves him very much and he loves her just the same.

So Eddie isn’t sure why that thought bothers him so much to begin with. 

The next time Eddie sees him is at a fitting for Beverly’s dress. She had designed the dress she was going to wear herself, but she had chosen some bridesmaid dresses from a local wedding dress shop in the city. Eddie was simply overseeing the fitting and speaking with the tailor about when the dresses would be finished when Richie walked in.

He was wearing a suit this time, looking better than he’d ever seen him before. He had gotten used to his trashy-looking t-shirts with hideous graphic designs on him and his patterned button-down shirts. He cuts a pretty incredible figure now that he’s not wearing loose, ill-fitting clothes. Richie isn’t exactly the fittest person he’s ever met, but he’s still broad-chested and tall. He looks like he’s even combed his hair for once. He greets Beverly with a hug and warm kiss on the cheek and looks at her like the shining jewel that she is before she disappears into the back to try on her dress. Eddie wonders briefly what it would be to have Richie’s arms wrapped around him--

STOP. Stop it. Halt that line of thought. He can’t even begin to entertain this line of thinking. There’s a myriad of reasons he can’t even think like this:

  1. Eddie is not a walking cliche. He’s seen the godforsaken Jennifer Lopez movie and ended up hating it for its wild inaccuracies and all-around ridiculousness. 
  2. It is incredibly unprofessional to think about the groom like this. Even though he’s kind of funny. And kind of attractive. In fact, it’s just straight-up inappropriate to think about a nearly-married man like that. Especially when his fiance is so beautiful and kind. 
  3. Even if Eddie had decided to be a homewrecker—which he _wasn’t_ —Richie is straight and therefore a waste of Eddie’s precious, wedding-planning time. Eddie has played the Straight Guy game and it never ends well for anybody involved. 



“Hey, Spaghetti,” Richie says, grinning at him, looking a fucking picture in his stupid suit. Eddie frowns at him. 

“It’s Eddie,” he corrects, like he has for the last several months of wedding planning with Beverly and Richie. “What’s with the monkey suit?”

Richie looks down at himself, like he’s forgotten what he’s wearing, like he’s forgotten about the suit that fits him like a dream. “Oh yeah,” Richie says with a laugh. “I had a meeting with a producer this morning and didn't have time to change.” He smooths down the white, crisp dress shirt he’s wearing and waggles his eyebrows at Eddie. “Like what you see, Eds?”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “I’m in the wedding business, Richie,” Eddie says. “Guys in suits are a dime a dozen.” He is lying. He is lying through his teeth. Technically, Eddie does see men in suits almost every day of his life, but none that look like Richie does in a suit, especially since he's never seen him in one so nice. 

“Ouch, Eds, you really go right for the jugular in my self esteem,” Richie says, pressing a hand to his chest like he’s caused Richie physical pain with his dismissal. It’s endearing. It shouldn’t be endearing. Eddie has no idea what’s happening to him. Still, Richie just smiles at him and Eddie’s stupid, traitorous heart skips a stupid, traitorous beat and Eddie wants to take a step closer to him, be in his space and for the splittest of seconds, Richie looks like he wants to do the same and—

Bev walks out from the back in her wedding dress, an absolute vision in white. Whatever moment he and Richie were sharing was shattered as they both turned to look at Beverly. The dress is elegant and delicate-looking, with long lace sleeves. It’s perfectly fitted for her and it’s maybe one of the most beautiful dresses that Eddie has ever seen and Beverly is probably one of the most beautiful brides that Eddie has ever planned for. 

His eyes track from Beverly to Richie, who’s grin is huge. Normally, Eddie would make some kind of crack about seeing the bride before the wedding, but the look on Richie’s face erases any quips that he had stored up. He looks… so happy to see her in her beautiful dress and he’s sure that he’ll have that exact same happy expression on his face when he watches Beverly walk down the aisle to him in just a few months. 

“Bev, you look beautiful,” Richie says. 

Beverly smiles at him. “Thank you, Rich.”

And Eddie? Well, Eddie fades into the background, like he’s meant to do as their wedding planner. 

—

So, after the Suit Incident, Eddie goes into survival mode. He can’t see Richie. That’s the short and the end of it. He’s compromised. He’s developed some kind of ill-advised crush on his client’s soon-to-be husband and he has to take a step back from planning. Luckily, they’re closing in on the final two months of planning, so Eddie doesn’t have to see too much of Beverly--and by extension Richie. 

He puts the last of any menial responsibilities on any of the underlings and begs off any consultations meetings that he has with Beverly, stating that he’s got other weddings to plan, since it is wedding season. And he’s not lying for the most part. But he’s mostly doing it to spare his own tattered, misplaced feelings. 

Eddie tends to think about his life as a Before and an After. Specifically, Before his divorce and After his divorce. Most people can’t mark the time in their life when everything changed for them, when it all suddenly became so different that they can since the distinction between two periods of their life. Change comes gradually for most, one thing at a time as if it’s just a natural progression of time. It’s subtle. 

The changes in Eddie’s life have always been something akin to a fucking trainwreck. 

Six years ago, Eddie’s mother died of liver cancer and he decided that, in the face of his mother’s death, he had to reevaluate his entire life. It wasn’t that he ever thought his mother was invincible, but it shattered the illusion of life that he had crafted for himself. He had molded his life around this woman and now there was nothing holding the shape of it all anymore. The expectations he struggled so hard to meet for thirty years were suddenly buried six feet underground in a grave in upstate New York. 

For the first time in his life, he asked himself the question he had too scared to answer: 

_ Eddie Kaspbrak, what are you looking for? _

He had looked around him and found that he hadn’t found a single thing he had been looking for. Huge chunks of his life were being lived not for himself, but for his mother and now his wife. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but he was sure as hell going to find out. 

The divorce was finally almost a year to the day after his mother died. 

“So, Eds, are you married?” Richie asks him. They’re at the venue for the wedding. It’s a beautiful large conservatory. Beverly had wanted a garden and Eddie had found her the most beautiful flower garden that he could find. It’s unfortunately an appointment that he can’t shrug off or shove off onto another person. 

“Um,” Eddie says awkwardly. He’s looking over the proposed seating chart. “No, actually.” 

It’s an awkward question to answer in normal life, but with the occupation of Wedding Planner, most people tend to assume that he’s married. 

“Really?” Richie asks. He has his big hands shoved in his jeans. He looks oddly pleased by the answer, but Eddie is probably imagining things. “An unmarried wedding planner? I feel like that’s contradictory.”

“Well, I aim to defy expectations.”

“Consider them defied.” He smiles at Eddie and Eddie’s heart clenches his chest. He wants to escape this conversation ASA-fucking-P. “Have you ever been…?”

“Uh, yeah, actually. For about ten years,” he answers. “We divorced five years ago.”

“Oh yeah? She leave you for a younger man or something?” Richie teases.

Eddie huffs a laugh, unable to help himself. “Ha, no, nothing like that,” he says. “We just weren’t right for each other. And being gay and married to a woman wasn’t working for us, surprisingly enough.”

At this, Richie grins from ear to ear. “Speaking of gay,” Richie starts to say, like he’s gearing himself up for something. He’s about to continue his sentence when Beverly swings around the corner. 

“There you are!” she says. “Rich, I need you to help Bill. The idiot can’t find his hotel. This is what he gets for being an LA yuppie.” 

Richie looks from Beverly to Eddie, like he’s being forced to make a difficult choice. He presses his lips together and exhales loudly through his nose. He turns to face Beverly and gives her a tight smile. “Sure, Bev, I’ve got it.” He gives Eddie one last imploring look before heading out to help whoever the hell Bill is.

Eddie adamantly doesn’t think about Richie’s smile and what Richie could’ve been about to ask him or the disappointed look he had on his face when he left. 

—

Eddie’s entire worldview comes crashing down around him a month before the wedding.

“Eddie! I’d like you to finally meet Ben,” Beverly announces, her arm looped around the arm of a man who is most assuredly not the man he thought she was engaged to. This man is tall, like Richie, but he’s handsome in a more classical and traditional kind of way. He’s clean-cut, with a rugged sort of flair. He got a soft smile on his face.

“Ben,” Eddie says, feeling dazed. His mind suddenly races through his most recent memories: the names on the invites, the signatures, the labels on the seating arrangements.  _ Ben Hanscom _ . Not  _ Richie Fucking Tozier _ . He shakes himself from his reverie and shakes Ben’s hand when it’s offered. “Ben. So nice to meet you, finally.”

“I know, Bev has been so great with planning while I was in London,” he says. He kisses her hand lovingly and gazes at her with stars in his eyes. Eddie feels like an  _ idiot _ . This makes so much more  _ sense _ . “And I hear Richie has been a big help too.”

“Oh, he’s been great,” Beverly gushes. She looks at Eddie teasingly. “Though my guess is that being helpful isn’t the only reason he likes to come to all our meetings.”

Eddie feels himself flush to the roots of his hair. “Well, he is your uh…”

“Best Man? Man of Honor? Take your pick,” Beverly fills in for him. “Sure, but he’s never been the kind of guy who cares about this kind of thing. I think he has some  _ other _ intentions.” The wink she gives Eddie is exaggerated and silly.

“He can’t really stop talking about you,” Ben adds in.

“It’s kind of adorable,” Beverly says. 

Eddie rubs the back of his neck, feeling shy. He clears his throat. “Let’s make sure we still like the flower arrangements, shall we?”

—

Before Eddie knows it, it’s the day of the wedding. He doesn’t see Richie at all since Ben’s return, who has taken up on all the tasks he’s been missing out on since he’s been in London. Ben’s motto for helping with the wedding boils down to  _ whatever Beverly needs _ , which Eddie can work with. 

And, like all Kaspbrak weddings, it goes off without a single hitch.

Eddie stands in the back of the crowd as Beverly and Ben take their vows in front of all their friends and family. Richie stands next to Beverly at the altar, happy tears in his eyes as he watches his best friend get married to the love of her life. His hair is combed down for the first time and he’s wearing a bespoke deep maroon suit. Once, Richie’s eyes tick to the crowd and they catch Eddie looking at him. For once, Eddie doesn’t look away. In fact, feeling bold, he smiles at Richie and gives him a wink. At first, Richie gives him a bewildered look but then his face splits into a giant smile and he sends Eddie his own wink. 

After the wedding, they all move to the reception area and that too continues on without a single interruption. Once the initial jitters of a job well done subsides, Eddie puts down the clipboard he has been whiteknuckling for the past four hours. 

“Feeling good, J-Lo?”

Eddie turns and finds himself looking at post-wedding Richie. He’s taken off his jacket and his tie, leaving only the trim white button-down. He’s popped the first few buttons and rolled up at the sleeves, revealing his hairy forearms. Not that he knows that Richie isn’t the groom, he lets himself give Richie a luxurious once-over. 

“Ask me again once the reception is really over,” he says. “There’s still time for something to be set on fire.”

“Don’t invite that kind of bad juju, man, what the fuck,” Richie says, laughing. He leans against the wall, facing Eddie. “It was a great wedding. You’re good.”

Eddie hums and shrugs. “Not that good,” Eddie says. “Can I tell you a secret?”

“Is it juicy?”

“Depends on your idea of ‘juicy’.”

“Well…” Richie says. Eddie watches Richie’s eyes track down Eddie’s body and lands on his ass. 

“Fuck off, you’re terrible,” Eddie says, chuckling. He pushes Richie’s shoulder lightly and moves in closer to him. He drops his voice down to a whisper. “I thought you were the groom for five months.”

Richie inhales and chokes in surprise, laughing in between coughing fits. “You thought I was  _ what?! _ ” he wheezes out. 

“Shut up, shut the fuck up, alright, you were around for all those fucking consultations and you and Bev were so close and touchy—”

“So that made you think I was the  _ groom?!” _

“Well!” Eddie throws his hands up in the air. “It was an honest mistake!”

Richie is still wheezing and laughing, curling in close to Eddie. “Are you that fucking mean to all your grooms then?” he asks. “Because you were kind of a stone cold bitch.”

Eddie settles his hand on Richie’s chest and looks at him through his lashes. “Only the grooms that I’m into,” he says lowly. 

Richie’s mouth drops open in surprise for a moment, stunned by Eddie’s declaration. Once he regains the ability to speak, Richie says, “Well, that works at fucking great for me then, since I only flirt shamelessly for five months with wedding planners that I’m into.”

“That so?” Eddie asks teasingly. “Then I guess it’s okay if I…”

As Eddie trails off, he leans up into Richie’s space. Like a magnet, Richie comes down to meet Eddie, his eyes fluttering shut behind his glasses and their mouths meet for the first time. The feeling zings through Eddie’s body and, for the first time, he understands the idea of feeling fireworks when he kisses somebody. Richie’s lips are soft, but they’re sure, moving against Eddie’s lips in an answering rhythm to Eddie. 

They part, both breathless. Richie steals a kiss at the corner of Eddie’s mouth, as if he’s unable to help himself.

“I normally don’t hook up at weddings that I plan,” Eddie says, his voice unexpectedly gruff. 

“I hope there’s a ‘but’ to that sentence.”

Eddie bites his bottom lip and smiles up at Richie. “But this time I’ll make an exception.”

**Author's Note:**

> please feel free to follow me on [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/TRVSHM0UTH)! i love making new friends and also screaming about these middle-aged idiots!


End file.
